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From: eckert@immd4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (Toerless Eckert)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.sys.cisco
Subject: Re: Frame Relay?
Message-ID: <1991Jun10.163322.20801@informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
Date: 10 Jun 91 16:33:22 GMT
References: <35801@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Organization: CSD., University of Erlangen, Germany
Lines: 45

From article <35801@boulder.Colorado.EDU>, by forster@cisco.com (Jim Forster):
>>> The other advantage (or disadvantage) is that the frame relay network
>>> will most probably be run by a commercial provider for the whole
>>> frame relay net, whereas in the case of leased lines you'll have
>>> to control all active parts in your net. So it's mostly a different
>>> way of splitting the administrative responsibilities.
> 
> In my original posting I was trying to point out that from a purely
> technical viewpoint, I don't see any Bandwidth/Cost advantages of FR over
> Router Networks.  The addressing advantages are subtle, but sometimes
> significant.

I agree completely. The only real advantage that i see is for non
specialised carrier companies, who may have less problems running
a frame relay network than a router network - PSI, Alternet and so
on are not the typical examples of public data network carriers,
and even though there are even european carriers who are already into
the router business i do not believe to see a company like german
telecom dive into that business. 

The sad thing is only that there are many arguments that are used in favour
of frame relay, that are not advantages of frame relay. For example
security is one of the hype arguments for frame relay, as they tell that
frame relay can effectively protect different customer groups from
each other - well, given the correct software this can be done
(much better then) with pure router networks too, but they just don't
believe this.

On the other hand, the customer has probably to put much more
work into configuring his net on a frame relay bearer service compared
to a router network that is already based on his protocols, so for a
customer going for IP or CLNS it may even be simpler from the point
of administration to go for a router network (that's the whole
operating theory of public carriers: they only want the money, not the
hassle ;-))).

Sorry, this whole discussion may be totally misplaced on this group,
i'll stop now.


---

             Toerless.Eckert@informatik.uni-erlangen.de
    /C=de/A=dbp/P=uni-erlangen/OU=informatik/S=Eckert/G=Toerless
             bandwidth - the final frontier.